b) We haven’t decided on our model yet. Right now, we have a number of full-time academics, a number of research associates who attend seminars and collaborate with the full-time crew, and research research visitors coming periodically. Having researchers visit from other institutions seems useful for bringing in new ideas, getting to collaborate more closely than one could online, and having the visitors take back elements of our work to their home institutions. I would guess in future it would make sense to have at least some researchers who visit periodically, as well as people coming just as a one-off. But I couldn’t say for sure at the moment.
c) Yes, we are. Behavioural economics is already something we’ve thought a little about. Our reason for not expanding into more subjects at the moment is the difficulty of building thoroughly interdisciplinary groups within academia. As a small example, GPI is based in the Philosophy Department at Oxford, which isn’t ideal for hiring Economists, who would prefer to be based in the Economics department. Given that, and the close tie in the past between EA and philosophy, we see a genuine risk of GPI/EA being thought of as ‘philosophy plus’ rather than truly multi/interdisciplinary. For that reason, we’re starting with just one other discipline, and trying to build strong roots there. At the same time, we’re trying to remain cognisant of other disciplines likely to be relevant, and the work that’s going on there. (As an example in psychology, Lucius Caviola has been publishing interesting work both on speciesism and on how to develop a better scale for measuring moral traits EAs might be interested in.)
d) The best source of information is our website. I do plan on putting occasional updates on the EA forum, but as our work output will largely be academic papers, we’re unlikely to publish them on here.
Glad to hear you’re finding it useful!
a) Yes, that’s the plan
b) We haven’t decided on our model yet. Right now, we have a number of full-time academics, a number of research associates who attend seminars and collaborate with the full-time crew, and research research visitors coming periodically. Having researchers visit from other institutions seems useful for bringing in new ideas, getting to collaborate more closely than one could online, and having the visitors take back elements of our work to their home institutions. I would guess in future it would make sense to have at least some researchers who visit periodically, as well as people coming just as a one-off. But I couldn’t say for sure at the moment.
c) Yes, we are. Behavioural economics is already something we’ve thought a little about. Our reason for not expanding into more subjects at the moment is the difficulty of building thoroughly interdisciplinary groups within academia. As a small example, GPI is based in the Philosophy Department at Oxford, which isn’t ideal for hiring Economists, who would prefer to be based in the Economics department. Given that, and the close tie in the past between EA and philosophy, we see a genuine risk of GPI/EA being thought of as ‘philosophy plus’ rather than truly multi/interdisciplinary. For that reason, we’re starting with just one other discipline, and trying to build strong roots there. At the same time, we’re trying to remain cognisant of other disciplines likely to be relevant, and the work that’s going on there. (As an example in psychology, Lucius Caviola has been publishing interesting work both on speciesism and on how to develop a better scale for measuring moral traits EAs might be interested in.)
d) The best source of information is our website. I do plan on putting occasional updates on the EA forum, but as our work output will largely be academic papers, we’re unlikely to publish them on here.
Thanks for the heads up!